


Being 'Katie' OR The Story of How Rose Tyler Stole a Blind Date

by bluedawn



Series: Gingerbread Houses [4]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Blind Date, F/M, Fluff, Online Dating, Romance, Roommates, human!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 11:52:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7890952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedawn/pseuds/bluedawn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A recently dumped and grudgingly single Rose Tyler gets mistaken in a bar for the blind date of a very, very attractive man with some really great hair.  This is their story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Being Katie

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, so here's the thing. I went ahead and marked this 'Adult' even though, at the moment, it's just rather suggestive and fades-to-black. Sorry about that! =) I did it so this little one-shot I wrote today could go up. Me! A one-shot in a day! That never happens!
> 
> There is an intended middle chapter of smutty smut smutz that shall be written one day, but the smut-writing-servers of my brain are currently engaged in creating Dragon!porn for An Adventure Worth Telling. This idea came to me yesterday while I was watching the 'Katie' S202 episode of New Girl (it's hilarious - you should go watch it). There's some dialogue from that woven in. I wrote the second chapter first and giggled almost continually while I was writing. I hope you like it!

Rose stared down into her brightly coloured pink drink and sighed. It was mocking her with its disgustingly happy hue, she was sure of it. In fact, this whole bar was mocking her. All bright heart decorations and jubilant couples and it wasn’t even Valentine’s Day yet! The stupid holiday was still a week off but it seemed like the entire world (minus her, of course) had gone gaga in love this year. Seriously, why would any establishment decide to turn all of their drinks pink an entire _week_ before the ludicrous, made up event anyway?

She didn’t even miss Adam most of the time, thank you very much. He was a prat and a prick and she was glad to be rid of him and his condescending comments and his dumb hair. But _all_ of her friends were content and in love and they were all off on a romantic weekend get-away to the country. A romantic weekend get-away to the country that she was supposed to have been on too, with the aforementioned prat. 

_The girls had been soooo angry (Donna especially) when they’d found out that Mickey had accidentally booked their romantic holiday the week BEFORE Valentine’s Day, but the much cheaper cost had mollified them in the end. And it had been really sweet of them not to make Rose pay when she’d had to bail because of he-who-would-not-be-named._

She and Adam had broken up a month ago, right after some big tech company had started sniffing around one of his new programs. He’d told Rose, in no uncertain terms, that he was going to be a big shot very soon and so he was going to need someone a lot smarter and more sophisticated than a former-Estate girl with three roommates, a piddly little teaching job, and a mountain of student loan debt to hang on his arm. She tore her napkin into angry strips and took a hasty, deep drink of her pink vodka-whatever it was. 

She hadn’t even _liked_ Adam that much. And Donna and Amy reeeeaaally hasn’t liked him, especially after they’d heard about the break-up speech. In fact, she was relatively certain that Donna had stomped his iPad Pro and shoved the broken pieces into the dumpster the night she’d come home in tears from his (very public) dismissal of her. (Though all her roommates and their collected boyfriends had fervently denied the existence of the device when Adam had come ‘round to collect his things - from the sidewalk. They had been lovingly dumped there by an irate Martha and Mickey and _might_ have acquired a few ‘accidental’ burn marks from a mechanic’s blowtorch. Her friends were great.)

Adam had been someone to go do things with, that was all. Amy had Rory, Donna had Lee, and Martha had Mickey and she had...no one, before Adam. Yes, the conversation had been rather boring (and usually about Adam), the dates had been a bit tedious, and the sex had been mediocre so, all in all, she was relieved that it was over, but his words still stung. After all, if she couldn’t even hold onto an idiot like that one, how would she ever find someone?

She just longed what all of her friends had! Amy brought Rory out of his shell and he worshiped her like a goddess (which she was). Lee rounded Donna’s rough edges and never even blinked at her acerbic tongue (which she had). Martha made Mickey feel like he was important and valuable and Mickey made Martha feel like she was brilliant (which she was). They were all always pestering Rose to be more optimistic and adventurous and to have more confidence in herself. But that was easy for them to say! They’d already found their other halves! They didn’t have to struggle into spanx and clot on make-up and troll through a bunch of losers at a bar to find somebody worth spending time with. All they had to was look across the popcorn bowl at their drooling, snoring soulmate! She sighed heavily into her drink.

Jack was her only single friend, but even that was because he _chose_ to be single. He liked the tom-cat life. He was always telling her about this handsome guy, or that beautiful woman, or, on a few memorable occasions, that adventurous couple.

Although lately most of his talk had been about one topic only. He had been going on, non-stop, for a month now about some friend of his that Rose just _had_ to meet. Apparently, the man was a smart, gorgeous doctor who had just moved back to London after spending a few years in Scotland. According to Jack, he was perfect for her. In fact, she had a date with the mysterious physician tomorrow night. But she was thinking about cancelling. Years of being told that she would never amount to anything by teachers, employers, and, on occasion, her own mother, combined with Adam’s recent crippling words had shot her confidence to hell. How was she supposed to talk to a _doctor_?

She downed the rest of her drink and motioned to the bartender for another one. Just as it was being placed in front of her, she felt a tap to her shoulder. She turned and promptly forgot how to breathe. Standing beside her bar stool was the most gorgeous man she had ever seen in her entire life. He was tall and slim, with thick chestnut hair that stuck straight up, a sprinkling of freckles across his cheeks, and a pair of dark-rimmed glasses perched on his nose.

“Hi, excuse me,” he stammered, his hand flying to the back of his neck. “Are you Katie?” 

Rose gaped at him in silence.

“I...I’m ah, Jack. From Cupidmatch?”

“And I’m the girl from my dreams of you,” she stammered, cursing to herself as she realized that that sentence made _no_ sense. Maybe she shouldn’t have downed that pink thing in two gulps.

“You, you are Katie, right?” he asked, frowning slightly and examining her over the tops of his glasses.

Oh, oh, why did he have to do that? He looked like a sexy professor waiting for an answer from a breathless, naughty TA.

Whoa. She definitely needed to slow down on the pink things.

“Yeah,” she replied quickly, before she could think about it too much. “Yeah, that’s me! I’m Katie! Hi!” She cringed again, hoping that he didn’t think her nervousness-turned-fake-exuberance was odd.

“Hi,” he said, looking relieved as he slid onto the barstool beside hers and motioned for a drink. “It’s nice to meet you! We’ve sent so many messages back and forth!” 

“Yeah,” Rose agreed, fiddling with her pieces of napkin. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, what was she doing? “So many messages!” she echoed. 

“How’s your cute little pet?” he asked, turning back to her after wrinkling his nose up at the pink beer placed in front of him.

Oh. She didn’t have a pet! She was terrible with animals. She didn’t even know how to lie about a pet. “I um, had to put her-ah, him down,” she stammered. Yeah, he was going to leave.

“You had to put your fish down?” he asked, his eyebrow quirking and mouth twitching a bit. 

Oh, but there was the sexy professor look again.

“Well, ah, yeah. You know, down...um, down the toilet,” she said, eloquently. He did not look convinced.

“Right, yeah, of course,” he agreed, after a long moment.

With the fish incident firmly in the past, they started to banter back and forth and Rose grew increasingly more comfortable in her role of ‘Katie’. In fact, it was exciting and rather intoxicating to be someone else for the night and there was an odd, rare thrill in the possibility that she might get caught. She’d never thought of herself as a risk taker before, but he was bringing something out in her that she didn’t even know she had!

Rose had to think on her toes to answer his (rather vague) questions about their apparent previous online conversations. And so she watched his face, trying to take her cues from him. When she said something that surprised or baffled him, she just turned on her charm and upped her flirting. By the time they were on their next round of drinks and had moved to a booth, they’d sailed safely past most of the chit-chit about CupidMatch and fallen into talking about films and music and just about anything else that came to mind. And her hand had already started creeping up his thigh and he had ‘accidentally’ brushed against her bum twice.

And him...did she mention that he was _gorgeous_? He was also charming and funny and boy, Rose Tyler (pre-Adam the knob) would have been all over him. Apparently ‘Katie’ liked what she saw too. Was this...was this what it felt like to be Jack Harkness? To want to take a guy home on the first night she’d met him? To do unspeakably dirty things to him and then kiss him goodbye in the morning, never to see him again? She was starting to think so. His blatant interest in her was making her feel sexy and powerful.

“So,” Rose began, leaning in close to him, close enough to make her breasts (accidentally, of course) graze the striped sleeve of his tight suit. “What was that band that we...ah…” she trailed off.

He seemed momentarily distracted by her chest and she could have whooped out loud when his gaze drifted down and then shot back up, his cheeks colouring nicely.

“I’ve been to 48 Creed shows,” he jabbered suddenly, a bit too loud.

Rose almost coughed in her drink. Creed, seriously? But she recovered quickly. Apparently, ‘Katie’ had questionable taste in music, though she seemed to have impeccable taste in men. “No way! I’ve been to 42!” she lied smoothly.

Yep, she was going to hell.

For a moment he blanched and Rose was sure he looked almost flabbergasted but he banished his surprise just as quickly as she had. “Wow! Way, uh, way to go Cupidmatch!” he said, lifting his drink to her and then taking a swig. She looked away for a moment and thought she heard him mutter “Creed. Seriously?!” into his drink.

“What?” Rose asked, frowning slightly.

“What?” he parroted back, too brightly.

“What did you just -”

“Hold on,” he said, cutting her off and leaning in very, very close to her. “You’ve got a piece of hair, just -” he moved even closer and tucked her hair behind her ear, letting his warm fingertips drift back across her hairline.

She was overwhelmed by his sudden proximity and that his lips, his beautiful, pouty lips, lips that she had been admiring all evening, were abruptly very, very near and…

She threw caution to the wind. His eyes, behind their glasses widened slightly, just before she crushed her mouth to his. But he was a quick learner and, with a moan of appreciation, he dove forward to meet her, his brilliant tongue working its way into her mouth with no shyness whatsoever.

In a very short time, she was straddling his lap in the booth and he was making some very indecent noises into her mouth. She, Rose Tyler, was straddling a strange man that she had just met in _public_. Oh, the things Donna (or Jack) would say.

Steeling her courage, she pulled back and admired his dazed expression. “Do you, um, d’you want to get out of here?” she asked, running her hands through the thick hair at the nape of his neck.

“Oh, yes,” he breathed, pupils blown wide. “Lead the way.”

They made out under the streetlamp on the corner, waiting for a cab. They made out in the cab, despite the cab driver’s vehement (and colourful) protests. They made out pressed up against her front door while she fumbled with her keys, to the wolf whistles of some neighborhood teenagers. 

Apparently, Katie was a bit of an exhibitionist.

They were naked by the time they reached the door to Rose’s bedroom, leaving a messy trail of clothes from the end the hall to her door. Honestly, she was a bit surprised that they actually made it to her room at all. All of the fiddly little buttons on his shirt had given her lust-addled fingers a lot of trouble and so she’d _ripped_ his shirt open. Ripped it! Not for the first time tonight, she felt as if she was outside her body, watching all of this happen to a sexy, impulsive film character. 

It was exhilarating.

As soon as her own shirt was off, he attached himself to her neck, giving her a love bite that she _knew_ was going to still be there in the morning. She’d never been into that before, but it seemed pretty exciting and naughty right now. She moaned experimentally, trying the sound out loud for the first time. 

Her roommates weren’t home, after all. They had all fervently agreed to a policy of ‘quiet sex only’ when other people were around and she’d never really been much of a talker anyway. But she was trying everything else new tonight. Why not try being loud?

He seemed to like it at least, if the increased action at her neck and against her thigh was any indication. His hands moved to her arse, pulling her against him, hard. She moaned again, louder this time and buried her hands in his hair. He made a sort of gurgling, appreciative sound in his throat and they stumbled backward so she was against the solid door of her bedroom. 

She decided to try his name. The women in romance novels were always doing that, after all, moaning their bloke’s names to drive ‘em mad. “Oh, Jack,” she said, breathily.

He suddenly released her neck, his head coming up almost comically fast. For a brief second he looked almost...offended but the look quickly melted away and he coughed. “D’you mind if we don’t use names?” he asked and his eyes darted away from hers and then returned. “It’s more...exciting without them, don’t you think?”

Well, that solved her inner-Katie dilemma. “No names,” she replied with a wide, tongue-touched smile.

“Brilliant,” he mumbled, diving in again.

It was going to be an interesting night for sure.


	2. Being Rose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I giggled almost continually while writing this. These nutters make me so happy.

Rose danced out into the hall toward the kitchen, clad only in her dressing gown, still grinning. Oh, the stories she had to tell the girls about last night! Ha! Yep, she was really enjoying being ‘Katie’. She wondered if she could keep it up. He was _obviously_ still interested, if this morning proved anything. Giggling to herself again, she pulled open the door to the kitchen…

And found it full of people.

Lee was at the stove, calmly flipping pancakes, with Donna at his side casually pointing out all the burned bits he was causing. Mickey and Rory were both seated at the table, looking sleepy. Amy was perched on the counter with her long legs crossed luxuriously, reading a magazine, and Martha was next to Mickey, her head buried in a thick textbook. They all looked up when she entered and Mickey gave a low whistle.

“Well, hello, Rose Tyler!” he said with a wide grin, his sleepiness banished in an instant. Martha elbowed him but she was smiling widely too.

“Did you have a nice morning?” Amy asked, innocently, flicking a page of her magazine.

“It’s just, we heard an awful lot of yelling coming from your room,” Donna said, turning around from the stove with a look of faux concern plastered on her face, covering up what had to be a massive smirk. “And some thumping, and some squeaking and…”

Rose’s mouth dropped open slightly. Oh, no. How long had they all been here? They weren’t supposed to have gotten back until later in the day, not until long after the gorgeous man currently in her bed was safely out of the house.

Amy elegantly hopped off the counter and sauntered forward, with Donna falling in beside her to prowl toward Rose “And, you know, Donna,” Amy began, pausing to consider the ceiling for dramatic effect. “I’m pretty sure Rory and I heard some yelling last night, too. Isn’t that right, Rory?” Rory’s suddenly very red face was the only answer he needed to provide.

“You guys weren’t supposed to get back from the cabins until this afternoon!” Rose stammered, her face an even brighter scarlet than Rory’s.

“Oh, Rory got some terrible poison ivy, so we came back late last night,” Amy said, casually, with a wicked grin. Rory silently held up a heavily bandaged arm.

“And the rest of us decided to come back early and surprise you with breakfast, to cheer you up!” piped Martha from the table.

“But you didn’t need us, did you?” cackled Donna and with that, all six of them burst into raucous laughter as Rose put a hand over her face and groaned. She leaned back and thumped her head against the wall a few times.

“Ok, ok!” she said, beginning to laugh as well. Donna had tears running down her face and she and Amy were clutching each other to stand up. Even shy, conservative Lee was beaming broadly at her, his pancakes forgotten for a moment. “Yes, I happened to have the best sex of my _life_ last night, thank you very much.”

They all whooped loudly. Rose cringed a moment, just imagining what poor Jack thought was happening down here. “SPILL!” demanded Amy.

“Well, I met him in a bar…”

Rose was interrupted by a loud chorus of “Ooooooo’s” from the assembled horde.

“Shut up!” she said, blushing again. “I met him in a bar and I brought him back here and we had sex. Lots and lots of really great sex.” 

“Oh, we know!” Rory muttered from the table, which garnered another round of laughter.

Rose threw all modesty to the wind. Well, fine. If they all knew already, she might as well brag a little. It had been incredible, after all. “It. was. Amazing. Seriously, I’ve never felt anything like it before. It was like, time slowed down, I left my body, went up to space, floated around for a while, became a goddess, exploded into a pile of bright golden dust, came back into my body...and then did it again. THREE TIMES.”

Mickey whistled again. “Whoa, boss! You’ve got a keeper there!”

“And then again this morning!” More whoops came her friends.

“Oh, we know about that one,” Amy said, her wicked smile returning. “And, apparently, a round of applause is due to the man.”

“There is one problem,” Rose said, squinting at her. “He thinks my name is Katie.”

“What?” her friends chorused.

“And that I’m a dancer. And/or something involving puppets.”

“WHAT?” they chorused louder.

“I know, I know,” Rose huffed. “It’s just, he came up to me in the bar, and he was supposed to be meeting someone from the internet named Katie and he was so hot and charming and he has the most _amazing_ hair and smile, and god, his BUM! And you guys all said I should be more adventurous, so I just...well, went with it. Then, one thing led to another and Jack started kissing me and -”

“Jack!” Donna interrupted harshly. “Do NOT tell me that you had sex with Jack Harkness last night. You can’t have been that drunk. God, we’ll have to hose you down and sterilize you.”

“Not that Jack,” Rose said, rolling her eyes. “Bar guy’s name is Jack, too. Although...oh my God! Jack!”

“What now?” Martha asked, sounding concerned at Rose’s suddenly panicked face.

“Jack’s supposed to be coming over any minute!” she said, running a hand through her sex-tousled hair.

“So?” Mickey asked, taking a break from stuffing his mouth full of chocolate chips. “He’s going to burst his buttons with pride.”

“No, no, I’m supposed to be going shopping with him to get a new dress for the date he set up for me tonight! It’s with some doctor friend of his that just moved here from Scotland. He’s been going on and on and on about how perfect this guy is for months! He’s going to be so mad at me if I screw this up!”

“If you screw what up?” came a deep, amused voice from the kitchen door. Rose closed her eyes. Damn his timing.

“Hey, Jack!” she said brightly, turning around to face her best friend, the first Jack in her life. 

“My, my,” the American laughed, coming closer to twirl her around. “Not that I don’t appreciate the view, but aren’t you a little under dressed for going shopping?” he asked, eyeing the wide expanse of her bare legs appreciatively. “Or, for that matter, to have a whole kitchen full of guests?”

“Jack, I -” Rose began and then her eyes widened as she glimpsed the next person poised to enter the already very crowded kitchen and dining area.

“Katie! What’s going -” her fabulously haired overnight guest began, before he stopped, gaping at all of the people in the kitchen. His hair was a riot, his suit was wrinkled and crumpled from its night on the floor, he very clearly had a love bite on his neck (Rose’s hand flew up to belatedly cover the matching mark on her own neck), and his ruined, button-less oxford gaped at the chest.

“Katie?” Jack asked in surprise, staring at Rose before doubling back to look at the newcomer. “Wait, DOCTOR?”

“Jack?” he exclaimed in a high voice.

“Doctor?” Rose repeated in confusion, looking between the two Jacks.

“Jack?” Jack Harkness repeated, frowning at the tall, spectacled man. “Wait, James...” he growled.

“James?” Rose asked, her gaze now on her sheepish looking bedfellow.

“Rose -,” Jack began, turning to her, his brow furrowed.

Donna’s loud, two-fingered whistle pierced through the flurry of confused name calling. They all paused and turned to look at the two red-haired women now standing in the middle of the kitchen with their arms crossed over their chests. “Oi! Somebody explain what’s going on here!”

“Weeeell -,” began the newest man but Amy cut him off.

“Not you, Glasses. We’ve all heard enough from you this morning already, ta.”

Realization dawned on his face and he immediately snapped his mouth shut, went bright red, and promptly tried to melt into the wall. 

A prolonged silence fell over the group. Jack was the first to speak. “Who the hell is Katie?”

Donna, Martha, Amy, Mickey, and Rory (Lee was very pointedly still making pancakes, his back to the action) all pointed at Rose, who raised a self-conscious hand. She looked over at the still-madly blushing man plastered against the wall. “I’m sorry, Jack,” she said, walking closer to him. “I’m sorry I stole you from the real Katie and I’m sorry that I lied to you about my name. It’s just...I mean, I…Well, look at you!” 

“He is very handsome,” Lee said off-handedly from the stove. There was a murmur of agreement from her assembled friends.

The man in front of her tugged at his ear. “Weeelll,” he began again, looking at her over his glasses. “I wasn’t _exactly_ completely, absolutely, totally, genuinely honest with you, either.” There was a scraping sound and Rose glanced over to see that both Mickey and Rory had risen from their seats, apparently ready to defend her honour. 

It was just as amusing as it was heart-warming. 

The tall man in front of her fidgeted awkwardly, nervously eyeing all of the other people in the room. “Is there, perhaps, somewhere more private we could go to talk about this?”

“Nope,” Donna declared, stalking across the kitchen and planting herself in front of the door. “Spill, Lover-boy.”

“Right,” he coughed. “Well, I’m, ah...my name isn’t Jack.”

From behind her, Rose heard the real Jack snort. 

“And I’m not...I’m not a shy food blogger who dreams of a destination wedding in Cardiff,” he continued.

There were assorted sounds of barely contained laughter from her friends. 

“Well, I don’t like Creed,” Rose stated (this actually got a guffaw-turned-cough from either Rory or Mickey). 

He smiled a bit at that. “Me neither, actually. In fact, pretty much all the stuff in that online profile is a lie. I just moved here and I was feeling lonely and so I set it up as a kind of...experiment. Just to see if I could do it, you know?”

Rose let out a relieved laugh. “That’s exactly why I went along with all of it after you asked me if I was Katie! I’ve never taken a guy home from a bar! I was lonely and depressed and I wanted to try it and you were so bloody gorgeous...”

“Thanks,” he said, shyly, shuffling a little closer to her. “Anyway, I was just going there to fess up to this ‘Katie’ but then you were so beautiful and funny and sexy, that I didn’t want to go. You were acting like you might feel the same way and I, I dunno. I felt like we had a connection, somehow. I just wanted to stay. And I know that I don’t deserve to say this, but I kind of still don’t want to go...” he trailed off, hopefully. 

Rose moved closer to him, being pulled into his pleading, intoxicating dark eyes once more. “That’s good. ‘Cause I’d love for you to stay,” she murmured, pressing her body to his and leaning up to kiss him...when Donna coughed loudly.

They sprang apart like chastened teenagers and a very awkward silence fell over the room once more. 

“Pancakes?” Lee said briskly, turning around from the stove with a plate piled high.

With the tension broken, the room dissolved into laughter once more but this time Jack and not-Jack were there to join in. The nine of them roared with laughter, clutching tables and counters and each other to stay upright.

“Wait, wait,” Amy sputtered, batting at Jack Harkness’ shoulders. “What was it you called Mr. Raggedy Man when you came in? Do you know him?”

“Oh, right,” Jack said, brushing tears of laughter from his cheeks. His bright blue eyes danced as he took in Rose and not-Jack, clasped to one another, giggling madly. “Well, I was going to do all of this tonight at the restaurant, but I suppose you’ve saved me the effort! Doctor James McCrimmon, I’d like you to meet the lovely, talented, and fantastic Rose Tyler. And Rose Tyler, I’d like you to meet the smart, sexy, chatty Doctor James McCrimmon! Surprise!”

Both of them gaped at Jack.

“You mean she’s -”

“And he’s -”

“Yep!” Jack said, before dissolving into guffaws again. “Your faces! Looks like I was right after all!” He gave them a sweet, soft smile before turning it into his trademark leer. “You know, Doc, I’ve always wondered, does the carpet -”

“JACK!” they both chorused. And with that, breakfast began, with James stepping right in the chaos of their strange little improvised family, cheerfully bantering with all of her friends and gesturing wildly with his active hands. Rose paused at the door on her way to change into some actual clothes just as Donna finished comparing him to a very thin strip of bacon and he indignantly quipped something back at her. 

Well, being ‘Katie’ had been all right, she supposed. It had won her the guy, after all.

But, as he suddenly glanced up and met her eyes, flashing her a wide, brilliant smile before turning back to steal Mickey’s fork, she realized that she wouldn’t give up being Rose Tyler for anything.

Unless, perhaps someday, it was to be Rose McCrimmon.


End file.
